The masking properties of the human ear as well as the statistical properties of speech makes it possible to reduce the subjective level of noise in microphone signals by the way of time-variant filtering. When the statistics of the noise signal is stationary it is possible to perform noise reduction by the way of time-variant filtering in devices that encompasses a single microphone only. One of the earliest to describe such a method for noise reduction was Boll, [1]. Boll called his method “Spectral Subtraction” as he measured the power spectrum of the noise and reduced the spectral power of the output signal by an amount equal to the measured noise power. Many have later treated the subject of single microphone noise reduction, for example Ephraim and Malah, [2].
Single microphone noise reduction techniques suffer from two limitations, the first being the need for stationary noise statistics and the second being that they require the signal to noise ratio of the microphone input to exceed a certain minimal value. If a device includes two or more microphones it is possible to use the increased amount of information at hand to improve noise reduction performance. Past work, for example [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] has shown that a relief from the need for stationary noise statistics is possible.
Known techniques include the use of a time delay signal [5], a measurement of angle of incidence [7] and a measurement of microphone level difference [3], [6], [7] to control the frequency response of the device. A method has been described [8] where the frequency is controlled by the quotient of the absolute values of the outputs of two different linear beamformers.
Current methods for noise reduction by the way of time-variant filtering using one or two microphones suffer from the limitation that a certain signal to noise ratio is required of the acoustic signal in order for the methods to work.
Hence it is an object of the present invention to provide a new and improved signal processing technique for filtering signals from microphone devices which is not subject to the above mentioned limitation, but which can provide noise filtering and noise reduction at low signal to noise ratios.